Day 37: Round 2 with Ball and Free Therapy

Ball taught the 5pm class tonight. I must confess, when I walked in and saw he was teaching, I about crapped my pants. Yesterday he turned me into a quivering shaking puddle of yoga carnage. The only thing that saved me was the fact that he was teaching at 5, so it was in the big (read: not as hot) room. The class actually went fine and I made it through all of the postures. The other yoga champion, Alisa, was practicing in the front row. I didn't keep my eyes on myself the whole time, I let my attention wander over to see some of her postures. Absolutely beautiful! She really is amazing. I happened to look over after falling out of my own standing bow to see her fully locked out. All I can say is wow.

Sometimes when I am in yoga, I get the benefit of a physical practice combined with some free therapy. The therapy comes about when I have little mini revelations during class, or sometimes afterwards on the drive home.

So today I found two little therapeutic gems during my practice. The first thing I realized was this: I was having another "mediocre" practice and I realized, that like a drug addict needs their fix, I constantly hope for the high of that "rock star" practice. You know, the one where you rock it out, do some amazing (for you) postures and feel very strong. You leave that room feeling on top of the world. Well, like life, your practice is different everyday and you are not guaranteed a rock star practice, and you don't know when they are going to happen. The thing I realized was our breakthroughs don't happen during those sessions. The breakthroughs are happening little by little as we make it through our mediocre sessions and even our dripping puddle of carnage sessions. Those sessions are what make the rock star sessions possible. I appreciate all of them...good, bad, mediocre, its an amazing thing this yoga.

Little gem number two: sometimes our teachers tell us to smile at odd times, like in cobra. I always think, are you kidding, I'm just going to look like the joker, or at the very least constipated if I smile while in this posture! I get why they tell us that...trick your body into thinking everything is good, release those endorphins. I get it. Well, what I realized today is that I have been through three very difficult things in such a short time. Over the course of six months I've suffered through the most painful breakup of my life, had problems with my daughter (unrelated to the breakup) a couple of months later, and most recently the very sad 4th of July passing of my beloved dog. So I've been sad pretty much this whole year! I started thinking today in class that it needs to be time for me to be happy, to find some peace. Misery attracts misery, so perhaps, in time I can learn to just smile, to "act as if I'm happy" and someday........it won't be acting anymore.